Member of Technical Staff

Role Description

The OpenClaw Foundation is seeking exceptional Members of Technical Staff (MTS) to serve as full-time maintainers, builders, and stewards of the OpenClaw ecosystem. This is not a traditional software engineering role.

• Operate as both an open-source maintainer and product engineer.
• Responsible for designing, building, maintaining, and evolving core components of the OpenClaw platform.
• Support the broader contributor community that helps shape the platform.
• Ship production code, review community contributions, guide architectural decisions, improve developer experience, maintain infrastructure, and help establish technical standards.
• Success is measured by how effectively you enable an entire community to build alongside you.
• Ideal for engineers who love open source and enjoy engaging with contributors.

What You'll Do

• Build Core OpenClaw Technology
  • Design and implement new platform capabilities across the OpenClaw ecosystem.
  • Develop production-quality software used by developers, researchers, enterprises, and end users.
  • Build systems that support large-scale AI agent deployment and orchestration.
  • Improve platform reliability, performance, scalability, and usability.
  • Contribute across the stack as Foundation priorities evolve.
• Maintain Open Source Projects
  • Serve as a maintainer for one or more OpenClaw repositories.
  • Review pull requests and provide technical guidance to contributors.
  • Manage issue triage and community requests.
  • Help define technical roadmaps and project priorities.
  • Ensure code quality, maintainability, and long-term sustainability.
  • Uphold governance and contribution standards across Foundation projects.
• Collaborate with the Community
  • Engage directly with developers and contributors.
  • Support community members through design reviews, technical discussions, and mentorship.
  • Participate in working groups and ecosystem initiatives.
  • Help create a welcoming and productive contributor experience.
  • Encourage external contributions and community ownership.
• Advance Agent Infrastructure
  • Help define how agents configure, communicate, establish trust, transact, and represent identity.
  • Contribute to interoperability initiatives and standards development.
  • Build vendor-neutral infrastructure that can be adopted across the ecosystem.
  • Collaborate with industry partners and researchers on emerging agent technologies.
• Improve Developer Experience
  • Build tooling that makes OpenClaw easier to use and contribute to.
  • Improve APIs, SDKs, documentation, testing frameworks, and developer workflows.
  • Reduce friction for both users and contributors.
  • Help establish best practices for building and deploying AI agents.
• Support Foundation Research & Innovation
  • Collaborate with researchers exploring the human-agent relationship.
  • Prototype and evaluate new capabilities.
  • Translate research findings into production-ready systems.
  • Explore emerging technologies that can strengthen the OpenClaw ecosystem.

Areas of Ownership

• AI Agent Runtime Systems
• Distributed Systems & Infrastructure
• Identity & Trust Frameworks
• Open Standards & Protocols
• Agent Communication Systems
• Security & Privacy
• Developer Tooling
• SDKs & APIs
• Product Engineering
• Platform Architecture
• Research Prototyping
• Community Tooling & Governance Systems

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in modern software development practices.
• Experience building and maintaining production systems.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, backend systems, or developer platforms.
• Experience working with Git and modern software development workflows.
• Excellent technical communication skills.
• Ability to work independently in highly ambiguous environments.
• Passion for open source and developer ecosystems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience as an open-source maintainer or major contributor.
• Experience building AI, machine learning, or agent-based systems.
• Experience with developer platforms, infrastructure products, or SDKs.
• Familiarity with standards development or protocol design.
• Experience operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Security, identity, or privacy expertise.
• Experience supporting developer communities.
• Previous involvement in open-source foundations or standards organizations.